Pros
The dogs and clients are what made this job worth it
Cons
The owner of the company is highly unprofessional and shockingly childish They will try and take as much of your time as possible, even during off business hours. There have been many times where I have worked weeks in a row and by weeks I mean close to month straight without single day off in between, weekends included. Naturally you burn out pretty rapidly so I would start to take some weekends to rest and very quickly I was approached by management and was told they wanted at least half of my weekends to be committed to work. I was never given a contract when I started with this company even though I was told many times over I would get one. Even employees who started after myself and worked only part time had signed contracts. But for some reason I was never given one. I tried to take a day off and gave as much notice for the day as I could. In person the manager of the Manhattan branch gave me the okay and told me to make any arrangements needed for my day off. A couple days later once my arrangements had been made I was told they messed up and could no longer give me the day. Rather than tell the owner of the company she had given me the okay, the manager never said a word and I was made to come into work for at least half a day. Fast forward a year later. I needed to take sick days that I am entitled to and I was met with passive aggression and given a hard time about being sick enough to take my sick days. The owner has also on more than one occasion told me other employee's personal business. She actually told me something very personal about an assistant she had at the time's personal life. Which once she told it to me, had I been that employee I would've been very upset about my employer having divulged such personal info to a complete stranger. The owner also told me she considered docking pay of another employee who worked for the BK branch of the company because he didn't look at his emails as quickly as she would like him to. On my last day I was locked out of the app we use to check into our dog walks so we can actually get the job done right before I made my way over to my very last job. Which I was extremely heartbroken over as I adore this dog and wanted to say goodbye to him and his wonderful owner. I texted the owner about this and got no response until I told her I was leaving because it seemed they'd decided to take care of the walk without telling me beforehand. Then I was met total unprofessional ism and very shocking childish behavior. The owner actually blocked me, cut my phone service and locked my phone, which I paid for, before I could go and transfer everything over to myself outside of the company's business line. Any potential dog walkers looking to start with this company I urge to really look elsewhere. Not only did the owner turn out to be wildly unprofessional but she is also extremely unfair when it comes to pay. Unless you've got about 17-20 jobs A DAY you won't make very much. She also pockets client's same day cancel fees when that normally goes to the walker who starts their day with the job lined up. When asked what was going on with the same day cancel fee by myself she told me flat out "oh we're still charging the clients but no longer paying it out". Even any potential clients I'd recommend to look elsewhere for a better dog walking service because this isn't it, and it's even worse being one of their employees. It also took more than a year for the owner to give me the info I needed to access my pay stubs. I finally just got to look through almost 3 years worth of pay stubs!!! It's unfortunate because I actually loved the job itself. All the animals I had the chance to work with and the clients who really appreciated what I did for them and their pets made it so fulfilling. I will always miss that part of the job. But everything else in between that truly ruined what could've been a wonderful thing.